I found a link to a Nation bashing story on Electrolite. The bone of contention boils down to a single line from an editorial by William Grieder. “The smug triumphalism of Bush’s unilateralist war policy could be abruptly deflated by economic events-which probably would be a good thing for world affairs, since Washington couldn’t run roughshod over others, but terrible for US prosperity.”
Patrick comments:
Of course, meanwhile, actual people’s lives will be ruined by the things-getting-much-worse part, but that’ll be okay since it’s all part of mankind’s march to a triumphant future. And in fact reformist measures are to be sneered at and dismissed, since they merely delay the exposure of the contradictions inherent in the system. This is why, for a certain kind of so-called leftist, the real enemies aren’t the powerful and the privileged. The real enemies, to be fought tooth and nail, are reforming liberals.
I agree with the criticism of leftist politics that Patrick makes but I’m not sure this is the real problem. Reading the rest of the editorial gives an entirely different sense to the story.
The systematic deceit and imaginative greed-the sheer chintziness of personal finagling for more loot-go well beyond the darkest hunches harbored by resident skeptics like myself. Indeed, the Wall Street system is now being flayed in the media almost daily by its own leading tribunes.
Blogging is good for analyzing issues but this seems to take a single line and blow it way out of proportion. To me the line may be mistaken but hardly worth condemning the whole article. My reading philosophy is to suck out the parts of the critique that matter and then continue on.
